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Product Description

Yoshi's New Island

Yoshi is back and he’s bustin’ out the big eggs. Crush your surroundings and create paths with his new Mega Eggdozers in a brand-new platforming adventure! It’ll take more than egg tosses and flutter jumps to lead fledgling Mario through a dangerous new island littered with inventive power-ups. Can you save poor Luigi?

Guide Yoshi and a young Mario through all-new stages, from slippery slopes to watery wonderlands. As Yoshi fans know, it’s all about the collectibles and they’re more enticing than ever to find. You’ll need the new Mega Eggdozers to beat puzzling platforming moments and locate every collectible and surprise. They’re hiding—are you seeking?

Key Features:

Discover a new island chock full of clever platforming challenges

Crush your surroundings to find new paths and secrets with the Mega Egg

Immerse yourself in a delightful, Yoshi-ridden world

Yoshi will be the hero of this game, guiding you through on a quest to save LuigiView Larger

The new Mega Eggdozer will help clear the path and lead you to surprises and success along the wayView Larger

*Sigh* Of course the irrational fanboys show up and knee-jerk downvote a review that is more than fair. I don't know what to tell ya folks. I'm just as torn up about this game not being the masterpiece I hope it'd be as you are. Look at both the critic and user scores on metacritic for this game for a moment; Yoshi's New Island is clearly a divisive entry. This was a REALLY hard game to score for me. Let's face facts, this isn't a perfect game, far from it. It's not as bad as the harshest critics say, but not as amazing as the wide-eyed fans praise it to be either. Never in my review do I say this game SUCKS, never. All I'm saying is that this is a game with major strengths, yes, but also major issues, as well as aspects that are mixed in quality, that put it in the balance of "average." 3-stars on Amazon means "It's OK." That's not a bad thing. I implore you, actually read my review beyond the score and the title before you give an unhelpful vote in a knee-jerk reaction. Most of the 2-3 star reviews on here have legitimate criticisms. Most of them are by lifelong Yoshi fans who actually know what we're talking about. Sheesh, none of us are putting you down for liking the game. We're just trying to help you figure out the best use for your precious cash. Someone left a comment telling me this review actually convinced them to GET the game, so read this review before you light your torches. Time to grow up, ladies and gentlemen.

*Original Review*

Friends, please lower your pitchforks and torches and give me a chance to explain. I am not a Nintendo hater. Quite the contrary, actually. My love for the original Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island is immense. Even after all these years, it's astounding how unequivocally perfect that game is in its design, execution, and creativity. In my opinion, it is one of, if not thee, best platformers ever made, and one of my all-time favorite video games. So you can imagine my excitement when Yoshi's NEW Island was announced, with Takashi Tezuka, one of the main directors from the original YI, heading development. YNI seemed poised and ready to deliver the kind of awesome experience that DKC Returns did for the DKC series. In anticipation for this release, I recently did a 100% playthrough of the original YI, and what a satisfying experience that was! It just cemented my love for that game. I am incredibly sad to say that Yoshi's NEW Island, however, is not the second coming of Yoshi glory you may have hoped for, but it's certainly not what I'd describe as a terrible game. I'll warn you right now, this will be a long review as I want to be fair to the game and to you, the reader. Let's get started...

First off, this is not a BAD game. There are some pretty big redeeming aspects to it that I think elevate this game to a level of 3-stars despite the major issues weighing it down. Here are the biggest ones...

- The classic Yoshi's Island gameplay mechanics. Really, this is the biggest reason I give this game 3-stars. As old as the original YI is at this point, it really does feature timeless, perfect gameplay mechanics. Yoshi's hover jump, ability to devour enemies and convert them to eggs, the ability to hurl said eggs in a huge variety of contexts and situations, the Super Mario cape, and the various Yoshi transformations all return and work as well as ever, for the most part. Even though YNI is lacking in some key areas, it certainly has stayed faithful to the core gameplay, ergo the game is fun to play. Overall, YNI is a sound game from a purely technical standpoint. It should be, seeing as how it is unwavering in its efforts to emulate the classic. It also introduces some new abilities, my favorite being the new SUPER MASSIVE egg that makes me cringe every time I see Yoshi pop it out that can decimate pretty much everything it makes contact with. Some of these new ideas are pretty fun, but the level design rarely utilizes them (more on that later).

- The level design. Just like the gameplay mechanics, the level design in YNI is certainly faithful to the spirit of the original. The way the levels are designed around the great gameplay is truly unique for a 2-D platformer, making for really fun, fluid platforming as well as exciting exploration. The characteristic YI collectibles like 20 hidden red coins also add a tremendous amount of fun and addictive replayability to the levels. Thankfully, the game DOES get harder as it progresses too. Early levels are almost insultingly easy, as you'd expect, but later levels do have a fair degree of challenge.

- The boss fights. The developers stayed very close to the classic formula of the original with regards to boss fights, and as such, they're super fun (notice a pattern with these positives? lol). There's not much else to say really. Kamek always shows up, turns what would be a harmless little enemy into a colossal beast, and it's super engaging to find a way to dispatch them. My only complaint about boss fights in this game is that they're over way too quickly.

- Good ol' Yoshi charm. I don't know what it is about Yoshi as a character and as a series, but it seems any game starring Yoshi has a very distinct brand of quirky charm you can't find anywhere else. It doesn't matter if it's a mediocre game, or a masterpiece, every Yoshi game has it, and this game does too. I wish I could explain it further, but that's as well as I can say it. Intangible Yoshi charm? Check.

And there you have it. Like I said, Yoshi's New Island isn't necessarily a BAD game. It does have some big strengths. However, there are a few aspects with mixed execution, as well as a couple HUGE problems that immediately jumped out at me and stayed like a thorn in my side. Sadly, they also do an effective job of dulling and obscuring the game's strengths. Here are the biggest problems:

- The story. I almost didn't even mention this. After all, the plot in any platformer is not that important. It's only meant to introduce the gameplay, and it does that here. What I DON'T like is how the game stomps all over and ruins the heartwarming ending of the original YI. Turns out, the stork delivered Mario and Luigi to the WRONG PARENTS at the end of YI. Who knew? Kamek shows up, babynapping shenanigans ensue, and the Yoshi clan band together once again to reunite Lil' Luigi with Baby Mario and stop Bowser from turning their home into his vacation spot........ No Nintendo... Just, no... I hate how they ruined YI's ending, immensely.

- The visuals. I love the coloring book aesthetic of the original YI. Not only is it a visual treat, but the bright colors and thick black outlines for all major features/characters actually made the gameplay better, as the expressive, stylized art style made it easy to focus on what was happening. YNI's visuals look more like Yoshi's Story mixed with an oil painting to me. It's an awesome idea on paper, but having it on the portable 3DS' screens makes everything feel more smeared and muddled. It can even be painful on the eyes trying to make out what's happening at times. A nice 3-D effect alleviates some of that, but not all the way. They also tried experimenting and added in visual elements that feel completely out of place, such as having the normal, colorful foreground clashing with a minimalistic, black and white Sumi-e painting for the background. It's just distracting. The animations are also not as good as the original, which is odd. Lastly, Yoshi's clown shoes just look stupid, I'm sorry. I realize this aspect is subjective. I'm sure others will love how this game looks, and indeed, sometimes it IS gorgeous. However, I think most will agree that, much like the rest of the game, it's a mixed bag.

- The sound design. Music in games is important to me. A bad soundtrack can really bring a game down and oh my god, the soundtrack in this game is atrocious! I can't possibly express how awful most of it it is. At least 85% of the tracks are just remixes of the first level's song. Seriously, what the heck happened here?! The original YI had tracks so memorable that I have never forgotten them, even after all these years (The Flower Garden, Underground, Athletic, Above Ground, every Boss them including the *epic* Final Boss theme, etc). The original YI had music that was uplifting, exciting, and so catchy, with wonderful instrumentation (especially for the SNES). Yoshi's NEW Island, on the other hand, has music that is boring, forgettable, and even downright annoying. Most of it is super slow, dull, and about as catchy as a slimy, dead fish. It's like a bunch of lullaby rejects. Even worse, most of them sound like cheap midi files emulating toddler toy instruments. Seriously, this is embarrassing ("Cruise the clouds" gave me cancer). It's no stretch to say the music of this game actually takes away some of the joy in the gameplay. How unfortunate. Other sound aspects, like Yoshi's frequent voice clips, as well as Baby Mario's classic crying, are sure to infuriate some, while others, myself included, will be indifferent to it. Still, that music man... my childhood weeps.

- Game length. This game is short. Six worlds fly by in less than five or six hours at best. Granted, you can keep playing for the sake of finding all collectibles, and because the level design and mechanics are mostly fun, this game does have some replayability in it. Still, I find the amount of content a bit disappointing.

- The new gameplay mechanics. The core classic YI gameplay mechanics are really wonderful, but some new ideas do not fare too well. I hate how some level designs and vehicle mechanics incorporate the 3DS gyroscopic controls. It doesn't work well and feels like an out-of-place gimmick. Other new ideas, like the giant Yoshi egg and egg-doser I mentioned earlier, are cool on their own, but the level design simply does not take advantage of these abilities, so you often won't use them. Despite the "NEW" in the title, YNI feels like the main focus was on delivering old YI gameplay. That's ironic.

I could go on, but the point is that Yoshi's New Island is a mixed bag. I rarely rate anything 3-stars on here, but Amazon's definition of 3-stars is "It's OK" and that's what this game is. It's nowhere near the quality of its legendary predecessor. In some ways it's better than Yoshi's Island DS, but in others it seems worse. Considering YNI was made by the same people as YIDS, I'm not sure what to make of that. For fans of the original YI, this game will feel like a glorified, expensive expansion pack with the same great gameplay overall but with some clumsy design and presentation issues. For those totally unacquainted with YI, you'll be presented with a Nintendo platformer about as equal in quality as New Super Mario Bros. 2, which is perfectly decent, but not nearly as good as the games it's trying to emulate. For me personally, this was kind of disappointing. Yoshi's Epic Yarn is now my last hope for a great Yoshi game in a while. Rather than keep playing YNI, I'll continue playing Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze and Persona 4 Golden for now. I wish I could give a solid recommendation one way or the other, but considering Yoshi's New Island is such a mixed bag, I really can't. I hope this review was helpful, at any rate. Thanks for reading. You can go ahead and get out your torches now.Read more ›

The last time I visited Yoshi's Island was back in 1995 on the Super Nintendo. Nineteen years later, with very little innovation to bring to the table, Yoshi's New Island strikes nostalgic hearts with a piercing arrow and delivers a solid, platforming adventure for newcomers, but may not be the re-imagining of the series progressive-minded gamers were hoping to get their hands on.

Not straying too much in the way of gameplay, Yoshi's New Island merits the same control scheme as its SNES predecessor and contains a plethora of new, whacky and charming levels which are a mainstay of the series. Some of the newer elements introduced such as the monolithic Shy Guys (coming in both original and metallic variety) and a cursor freezing function to aid with aiming, add a sensible, if not superfluous dynamic to the series' traditional gameplay that, while amusing, wouldn't be missed if they were absent. The only truly troublesome addition to the title would have to be the incorporation of motion-sensing, vehicular mini-games, which are entertaining about 50% of the time, and mind-numbingly frustrating the other 50%.

If you're hopping on board for story, Yoshi's New Island delivers an adorable, picture book tale which unfolds much like others in the franchise. The presentation and art direction blend seamlessly into the child-like atmosphere of oil-painted levels, making for an endearing and innocent backdrop that would impress even the great Dr. Seuss himself.

While Yoshi's New Island doesn't really excel at innovative design, it faithfully preserves many of the elements that fans have come to expect from the series. Still providing some of the greatest platforming in gaming history and opening the door to new, vibrant, imaginative worlds, this proud inheritor of the Yoshi's Island name dutifully carries on tradition while cautiously experimenting with promising additions to the franchise once they're refined.

This game is fun don't get me wrong, but their is some things I don't like.

The first thing you'll notice when starting up is the god awful music. My god I can't believe this made it into the game. The original Yoshi's Island had some fantastic music. And for some odd reason the sequels just can't get on that level.. (Yoshi's Island DS was bad too)

The game is fun, very similar to classic Yoshi's Island. You have the addition of new game play elements (like giant eggs). You'll notice that the game hides A LOT of hidden (?) flying clouds. It gets to the point where it's pretty predictable where they are.

The enemies are just as good as the original.

The Level design is very similar to the original, but not as good..

And last but not least the game looks great. The graphics are well done and the 3D is awesome.

The mixed reception of Yoshi's New Island has left me scratching my head. Some people think it's great, and others think its terrible. Professional review sites like Gamefaqs seem to give it more negative reception, while retail reviews seem to be a bit more positive. After reading comment after comment on this game, I needed to find out what I thought of this game for myself. Thus, I bought it the other day, played through it, and am now performing my first Amazon review on it.

I got this game within a couple weeks of finishing the GBA Yoshi's Island 100%. That playthrough pushed the game into my top five favorite games. Thus, I have a solid grip on the differences between the two games.

The short answer is that the original Yoshi's Island is definitely a superior game on every level. However, that's not to say New Island is bad. I think the problem with most Yoshi games is that the first Yoshi's Island was so good that when the follow-ups stumble somewhere, it's especially noticeable.

First off, this game has a feature in which, if you want, you can send your gameplay data to Nintendo via Spotpass to give them information on how to make new games. I'm surprised no one has done anything like that before! I don't exactly know how they use that information, but crowdsourcing like that is a great idea.

New Island's story is super-simple. It starts immediately after where the first Yoshi's Island ended, where it turns out that Babies Mario and Luigi were delivered to the wrong parents. The stork immediately takes off again to deliver them to the proper house, only to be ambushed by Kamek (again), have Baby Luigi kidnapped (again) and have Baby Mario fall to the sea where he's rescued by the Yoshis (again). It's a total cop-out and ruins the first game's ending, which might be a personal turnoff to some people. I'm kinda willing to look past it, but even I have to admit it was a really lazy excuse to make a new game.

The first things about this game that turned some people off are the visuals and the music. Both of these are very subjective things, but I personally like them both. The 3D models and backgrounds in this game look like they were colored with crayon, which I find utterly adorable. Some enemies look so cute that you almost feel bad about defeating them. As for the music, I think many people heard the title screen theme and the Yoshi clan theme and decided the whole soundtrack was awful. While I personally don't mind those songs, I'll admit the kazoos are pretty obnoxious. For the most part, though, the soundtrack is actually pretty good! The main theme gets remixed over and over in every stage except the castles and fortresses, much like Yoshi's Story or Super Mario World. That may not be for everyone, but I found myself humming along to the tunes -- even if they didn't always match the level they played on.

As people have said before, there's actually very little "new" about New Island. For the most part, it plays exactly the same as the first Yoshi's Island. For those who don't know, it's an exploration-based platformer that encourages you to take your time to find all the secrets hidden in each level. As I love exploration, this is the biggest draw for me about Yoshi games. Every level has a straight path that you can blow right through, but there are plenty of side-paths with goodies hidden in them. And if you want to score 100 points on every level, you'd do best to seek them out. Thus, this is not the game for you if you want to zip through a level as quickly as possible.

Something I noticed right away when playing is that Yoshi controls differently in New Island than in the first game. It takes him longer to get up to a run once he starts moving, and he can't stop on a dime. In addition, the hitbox for his tongue feels smaller, there's a short pause between when you press the egg-throwing button and the time Yoshi actually pulls out the egg, and aiming the eggs feels a little wonky. I have no idea why Arzest tried to fix something that wasn't broken, and I can completely understand if this is a turnoff for you. I managed to adjust to the differing controls after a bit, and once that was done, I could enjoy the game for what it was.

New Island's main gimmicks are the two types of Eggdozers and the gyro-controlled transformations. Mega Eggdozers destroy almost everything in their path and fill up a New Super Mario Bros. style 1-UP gauge as they crumble enemies and obstacles. Metal Eggdozers roll along the ground, bowling over enemies and rocks. They also have the extra function of enabling Yoshi to walk underwater while they're carried. They're only used in a few levels throughout the game, which is kind of a disappointment because I thought there was a lot of potential with them.

With the exception of a few levels, New Island moves at a very relaxed pace. There usually aren't that many enemies and obstacles to avoid, and you can take your time going through the level. This is a game I play when I want to chill out after something more intense, like Mega Man Zero. On the other hand, this game is also really easy. While the first Yoshi's Island had an excellent difficulty curve, this game doesn't really rank up the difficulty until late in the adventure. So if you're looking for a challenge, look somewhere else.

The transformations are all short segments where you have to guide the transformed Yoshi to the goal before time runs out by controlling him with the 3DS gyroscope. I was skeptical about this after reading so many negative comments about the controls, but they actually controlled quite well for the most part. The only vehicles that gave me trouble were the submarine and, to a lesser extent, the helicopter. I had to redo some of these segments several times, but I managed to get past all of them with enough perseverance.

The level design all around is pretty solid. The stages are noticeably shorter than the first Yoshi's Island and aren't quite as spread out. While that's disappointing, this was a game designed for a portable system, so the short stages work for on-the-go play. No two levels feel exactly the same. Oftentimes, a gimmick will appear in one level and then never show up again. Even many of enemies aside from the Shy Guys appear in only a few stages. That's a real shame, because some of those enemies were so memorable. I mean, what happened to the Bandits?! They were everywhere in the first Yoshi's Island, and they don't even show up until the final world here (and it's a double-downer for me, because the Bandits look adorable in this game and I wanted to see more of them)!

As for the bosses, they were pathetically easy, as I suspected they would be. Yoshi games don't exactly have a good track record when it comes to boss fights. While there are a few exceptions, bosses in Yoshi games tend to be very easy. One thing about this game is that you fight Kamek in every fortress here. While it's cool that we finally get to put a smackdown on that guy, I think it would've been better if they limited him to the World 6 fortress and gave us a better boss variety. I won't spoil the final boss, but I will say that it's a total FFIX Necron moment. As in it comes in with almost no explanation whatsoever. It's actually kind of hilarious.

Like some other Nintendo games, Yoshi's New Island has its own Super Guide in the form of Flutter Wings. If you die enough times in a level, a character named Mr. Pipe will cough up these wings for you. They enable Yoshi to hover as long as you hold the jump button, so you can float right over hazards and enemies. If you die again while you have Flutter Wings, Mr. Pipe will let you use Golden Flutter Wings, which make you immune to all enemies and attacks. I never mind these Super Guide things because you never HAVE to use them, and that remains true in this game but I know some people can't stand them. If you're one of those people, give this game a pass.

To make a long story short, this game has a lot of missed potential. By sticking so close to the original and doing little to set itself apart, its flaws become all-too-apparent. But did that stop me from enjoying it? Heck no. I had a blast with this game, short as it was (I beat it barely a day after I bought it). I have yet to find all the goodies in its levels and unlock each world's secret stage. And even when that's done, I'm sure I'll replay the game again.

If you dislike this game from the get-go, then you're probably not going to change your mind once you play it, but if you're on the fence about this title, I suggest you at least give it a try. Yoshi's New Island won't be winning any major awards, but its still a solid platformer in its own right.Read more ›